Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Child maltreatment, a broad category encompassing child abuse and child neglect, remains stubbornly high in the United States. Official data on investigations and substantiations of child maltreatment by state Child Protective Services agencies indicate that substantiated (confirmed) cases of child maltreatment remains high, with approximately 680,000 children confirmed as victims of maltreatment in 2013 (Child Trends, 2015).

There are striking inequalities in maltreatment rates by race/ethnicity and family structure. In 2013, the most recent year for which national data on child maltreatment is available, Black children had a substantiated maltreatment rate of 14.6 per one thousand children, compared to 8.5 and 8.1 for Hispanic and white children respectively (Child Trends, 2015).  Similarly, children living with a single parent are thought to be at greater risk for child maltreatment than children living in married parent families.

Although the vast majority of the extant literature about the risk for child maltreatment has focused on mothers, a second more limited body of research has begun to investigate the role of fathers in the risk for child maltreatment. This work generally indicates that fathers are disproportionally associated with risk for child abuse given the amount of time they spend with children compared to mothers (Margolin, 1992), and that social fathers may be more likely to maltreat than fathers who are biologically related to the child (Daly & Wilson, 1996).

It may be that non-resident fathers’ economic contributions and involvement in parenting reduces the likelihood of child maltreatment by single mothers. Non-resident fathers’ economic contributions may lessen the economic toil of single motherhood that has been linked to the increased risk for child maltreatment. At the same time, non-resident fathers’ co-parenting and direct involvement with the child might support mothers’ positive parenting behaviors and aid in children’s social-emotional adjustment, reducing the risk for child maltreatment. It is also possible that non-resident fathers’ involvement with their children could serve a monitoring role, reducing the risk for maternal child maltreatment through fathers’ presence in the child’s life.

 I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate two hypotheses. First, I ask whether non-resident fathers’ economic contributions and involvement in parenting moderate associations between mothers’ transitions to being single and the risk for child maltreatment. Second, I ask whether these processes differ by race/ethnicity.

I find limited evidence that non-resident fathers’ economic contributions and involvement in parenting moderate the association between mothers’ transitions to being single and the risk for child abuse. In contrast, non-resident fathers’ economic contributions and involvement in parenting appear to play an important role in moderating the association between mothers’ transitions to being single and the risk for physical and supervisory/exposure neglect. I also find that mothers’ transitions to being single may have different implications for the risk for abuse and neglect depending on mothers’ race/ethnicity. Mothers’ transitions to being single and the risk for child abuse appears to be confined to Black mothers, while the risk for child neglect may be more prevalent across a broad range of mothers.